WASHINGTON — Despite some of the most atrocious reporting on
any national public policy debate in history, public opinion stands
strongly in favor of Social Security reform that includes personal
retirement accounts. Curiously, the results of a poll released last
week that had nothing whatever to do with Social Security may have
a bigger effect than any of the others on the current national
debate.
According to the Gallup survey, President George W. Bush’s
overall favorability rating stands at 52%, which is consistent with
his numbers over the past four years (save for his post-9/11 bump
into the stratosphere). Meanwhile, favorability for Congress rests
at an abysmal 37%, its lowest rating since 1999, the year after the
impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. This data comes as
President Bush is locked in the fight of his life on Social
Security against obstreperous congressional Democrats and
pusillanimous congressional Republicans.
Heretofore, the president has taken an “all options on the
table” approach, urging members from both parties to join the
dialogue and share their ideas. The approach hasn’t gotten
President Bush very far. Most Democrats have remained unwilling to
join the discussion. And many Republicans have been less than
helpful. For example, last week Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called
personal retirement accounts “a sideshow.”
“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I
intend to spend it,” President Bush declared after his successful
re-election. Now may be the time.
ONE OPTION THE WHITE HOUSE might take is to shame an unpopular
Congress into doing what it otherwise demonstrates an unwillingness
to do. A Congress with a 37% approval rating has no political
capital to compete with a president who cannot run for re-election
and therefore has little to lose.
Moreover, Congress is an easy body to ridicule. It is mostly
faceless. The few names and faces that do emerge from the crowd
often do so because of scandal. Average Americans know little about
how it conducts its business. And, as the Gallup poll shows, it
enjoys little public enthusiasm.
It is almost inevitable that the president and Congress will
come to blows, anyway. The last two years of our last two- term
presidents (Reagan and Clinton) were wildly disruptive. It’s almost
as if the players in Washington feel like time is running out on
their window to settle old scores. And so President Reagan was
distracted with Iran-Contra. And President Clinton was
impeached.
Nonetheless, it would be difficult for President Bush to
distance himself from and hammer away at a congressional Republican
majority he, more than anyone else, helped to create. Which is why
it is so fortuitous for him that Congress struck the first blow.
Last week the U.S. Senate passed a budget bill that rejected
President Bush’s call for curbs in Medicaid spending. The move was
widely reported as a throwing down of gauntlets by Congress.
Now it appears that presidential partisans are fighting back.
According to Robert Novak, “Analysts at the Republican National
Committee (RNC) have sent this warning to the House of
Representatives: the party is in danger of losing 25 seats in the
2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for
the first time since the 1994 election.” Given the fact that in the
first two months of the year, Ken Mehlman’s RNC has out-raised
Howard Dean’s DNC by $21 million to $9 million, this RNC memo reads
more like a threat than a “heads up,” no?
A NEW DEPARTURE FOR THE White House in its Social Security campaign
might be to begin attacking Congress as a do-nothing body populated
by self-interested career politicians who are, in real time,
shirking their responsibilities. President Bush could easily
convince Americans that Congress has its priorities out-of-whack.
Example? While half of Congress refuses even to admit Social
Security faces financial problems, they wasted the nation’s time
last week obsessing about Jose Canseco’s book and steroids in
baseball.
One high-level Capitol Hill staffer, whose boss vocally supports
personal retirement accounts, agrees. “Most of the members [of
Congress] have found the carrot unappetizing,” he told me on the
condition of anonymity. “The White House should see how they like
the stick.”
